Archive for September 6th, 2012

Paul McCartney says one of his dearest memories of youth was the annual family New Year’s Eve party, when his uncles and aunts would gather and sing songs as they slowly got sloshed.

That’s the backdrop for his TV special titled Paul McCartney’s Live Kisses (the music part, not the drunk part). It’s airing on PBS affiliates starting on Friday, Sept. 7 as part of the Great Performances series.

Now, as we’ve explained before, PBS is not a “network” in the traditional sense, and each individual station does its own thing. That’s why we say Live Kisses “starts to air” on Friday, Sept. 7 – in other words, some PBS stations are airing it Friday, others aren’t airing it till late September and all points in between. So you may have to do some hunting around, depending on which PBS station is closest to you.

But Live Kisses is worth seeking out, for McCartney fans, Beatles fans and music history buffs in general. Backed by an all-star band – including Canadian Diana Krall – at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, McCartney performs some of the songs from his CD of traditional pop music, Kisses on the Bottom, which came out earlier this year.

It’s particularly fun seeing McCartney walking around the Capitol building, gazing at the pictures of his childhood musical heroes on the walls and sharing his thoughts and memories.

The term Kisses on the Bottom, by the way, comes from a lyric in a Fats Waller record that McCartney had as a kid.

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Bill has been a Sun columnist, reporter and editor for 22 years. Previously was in Sports as Toronto Raptors beat writer and NBA columnist, he joined Entertainment in 2005 as a television and music critic before moving exclusively to TV. Prior to the Sun, he worked at the Montreal Daily News, the Orillia Packet & Times and the Sherbrooke Record.